Monday, September 26, 2011

There's No "I" In Team - Part II

Yesterday I started on the topic of Men and Women and their differences in bathroom etiquette. I had only gotten as far as the bathroom door in the hypothetical restaurant, and I had to quit. It was going to just too long for one day, and I ran into a problem: I don't know what women are like in their public bathroom habits. All I can say is that they are amazingly organized in their trips. They leave as a group, and they return as a group. No woman left behind!
Men are so disorganized and out of it you can't be sure if a guy will make it back to your table even if he goes alone! I can probably sum up the male bathroom experience in one word: Paranoia.

Say you're standing at the urinal doing what comes naturally, and a guy comes and takes the urinal right next to you.

Can you look? I mean, it's only natural curiosity, wanting to see how you measure up, right? But there's a problem with that. What if he catches you?

he could be belligerent, and that could mean trouble for you. You were kind of invading his privacy there, and it sends the wrong message. Who could blame him for being, please pardon the pun, pissed?

then there is the opposite problem, which , in some cases, could be worse. What if he doesn't mind that you looked? What if he looks pleased that you are looking, and gives you an encouraging look in return? If you're interested, that's one thing, but try talking your way out of that situation if you're not interested!

Now, let's go the other route: Say you catch the guy next to you looking at you!

Say he sees that you caught him. Will there be embarrassment on his part? On your part? Should you be embarrassed about your 'part'?

You could get all belligerent, but that might seem defensive. Will he think you're embarrassed about your 'part'? Oh fer cryin' out loud!

What if he sees that you caught him, but he doesn't look embarrassed. What if he looks interested? I mean, that's fine if you're also interested, but what if you're not? Is there a good way out of that situation?

What if he sees that you caught him, and doesn't look embarrassed, but also doesn't look interested in the slightest! Just takes a gander and dismisses you. Someone might look at that, if they really try, like some sort of rejection. A guy might think Hey, what, I'm not worth looking at? You can sometimes tell these poor bastards, since they finish up and shake off vigorously, in a strange, misguided attempt to draw a second look. This gets embarrassing if it goes on for too long.
Not that I know, of course. But I've heard. From a friend. Yup. A friend.
...uh ... moving on...

Now, all that is when there is more than one guy in the bathroom at the same time, and you can see why we greatly prefer to go it alone. The stress involved is just immense! We're not even entirely with it if we luck out, and have a golden moment of complete privacy in the bathroom. We're still a mess. And to prove this, I give you the urinal.

We're men. We've all heard the jokes about guys being able to write their names in the snow. C'mon, please! If we had any kind of aim, or control, we'd walk into the men's room and step up to a hole. Just a hole, that's all we should need. That's it.

Have you seen the urinals they have out there? The smallest of them looks like a small sink, and they usually rival a full toilet in size, getting even bigger when you add in the porcelain backsplash.

Backsplash? What do they think we have, a fire hose? From a hole to a toilet with a back-splash?

And it goes even further in some public rest rooms. There are urinals out there (trust me on this one, ladies, if you've never seen one) that run from the floor all the way up to chest height on the average man. Four feet high! They look like someone took a small bath tub, ripped it up off the floor and stood it on end, leaning against the wall. They weigh more than some of the men using them!

And after all this, you want to know what tells me that some men just walk into the bathroom and lose it?

With all this going for them, sink-sized with backsplashes and upended tubs to pee in...

...some guys still miss!

Look, after seeing how organized (practically professional!) women are about their bathroom trips, all I can say is that we, as a species, need to keep the bathrooms separate. None of this 'unisex' bathroom crap! Guys, if women got a handle on what really goes on in there, what we go through each time, I'm pretty sure the human race would be extinct in about two generations. For Christ's sake, I'm disgusted with myself just thinking about it.